Depth perception for a 3D TV is provided by capturing two views 1 in two video streams, one for the left eye 2 and other for the right eye 4. Those two views are compressed and sent over various networks or stored on storage media. A decoder decodes those two views and then sends the decoded video for display. Various ways to represent those views can be put in two categories—(i) Half resolution or frame compatible formats where views are merged together in a single video frame, e.g., Top and Bottom panels as shown in FIG. 1 with left view 2 on top of right view 4, Left and Right with left view 2 next to right view 4, or Checker Board pattern (not shown) (see FIGS. 1 and 2 as an example of Top and Bottom, and Side by Side formats) (ii) two views are kept separate and each view has full resolution per eye.
FIG. 3 illustrates an example of a typical Electronic Program Guide (EPG) display for 2D TV. A viewer may use an on screen graphical user interface, most commonly the referred to as program guide or EPG 3 to see the channel/program list available. In a typical EPG display layout, various related information is typically presented in textual or graphical format in portions 9 and 7, and video is presented in a portion 5 corresponding to one or more channels. The graphical images typically include objects, such as “on screen display” (OSD) and “closed caption data (CCD).”
In either of the 3DTV video representation formats above, viewing the program guide runs into the following problems. The graphics and the text data is not displayed in both left and right views such that it appears on both eyes. The EPG also displays video in the small window typically as a picture-in-graphics (PIG) or picture-on-graphics (POG) manner. That window displays video corresponding to the channel selected in the guide, in a smaller size. However, if that video corresponds to a 3DTV channel then the current methods of displaying video in the window does not work, as simply scaling the video and showing it in a smaller size window may create severe distortion.
Further, when a user is surfing through the EPG, he/she is expected to run into the situation where some channels are in 2D TV format and others are in 3D TV format. Even in 3D TV format, there may be different Half Resolution modes (e.g. side by side or top and bottom etc). Going back and forth between 2D and 3D mode to adjust the program guide text and graphics depending upon whether the channel contains 2D video or 3D video will not provide good user experience.
What is needed is a solution for displaying mixed 2D and 3D content while a user is surfing/scrolling through the program guide.